The Band Concert
The Band Concert is a Mickey Mouse short cartoon, the first ever produced in Technicolor. It is one of the most highly acclaimed of the Disney shorts. Plot Mickey Mouse's concert band is performing a concert in a park. As the film opens, they are being applauded for having just played music from Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold's Zampa. They next begin Gioacchino Rossini's William Tell overture. Mickey's performance is first disrupted by Peter Pig's vibrato trumpet and Paddy Pig's tuba playing Prelude: Dawn. Meanwhile, Donald Duck rolls a vendor cart through the audience selling lemonade, popcorn, and ice cream, which further distracts Mickey. While the band is playing the "Finale" segment, Donald plays "Turkey in the Straw" at the same tempo as the band. Overhearing Donald, the entire band absent-mindedly find themselves playing Donald's song. Realizing that he accidentally switched genres, Mickey loses his temper over his performance being disrupted in this manner. Mickey destroys Donald's flute in two, only for Donald to get another one out. They play the song again and Mickey destroys the flute once more. The band resumes the segment, but when Donald plays "Turkey in the Straw" again, trombonist Daniel Dog pulls out several of Donald's flutes by the neck and forces him offstage, knocking him back into the vendor. Then, while Donald tries to play the song again, a bee harasses him. When the bee lands on Mickey's hat, Donald throws ice cream at the bee, which sends it into Peter Pig's trumpet and he hits it at Mickey, thinking that Mickey threw the ice cream at him. Mickey has the band play Ranz des Vaches and loses his temper when the bee interrupts the performance. Percussionist Horace Horsecollar tries to kill the bee with a hammer but accidentally hits clarinetist Goofy's head instead, driving his head down into his jacket, but he continues playing his clarinet from inside it. Finally, the band comes to the "Storm" segment of the overture which summons an actual tornado, prompting the audience, the seats, and Donald to run away. The tornado sucks up everything in its path, even the pavilion on which the band is playing. But the band is so used to the distractions by this point that they continue to play from inside the tornado (in which Mickey floats past the remains of a wrecked house). Peter Pig is spanked by a fence, and Clarabelle gets attacked by some undergarments and an umbrella which turns her flute inside-out. As the storm passes, the band (except Horace, Peter Pig and Mickey) is thrown into a tree and they finish the overture. Peter Pig gets hung on a tree, yanking his coat off, and then ends up on another branch, yanking his undergarments off, causing him to fall naked into a barrel. Yet by this time the only remaining audience member is Donald Duck who applauds enthusiastically. Witnessing Donald playing "Turkey in the Straw" as an encore, the band members express disapproval by throwing their instruments at him from off camera. Gallery Bandleader mickey.jpg 1935-fanfare-6.jpg Horace about to hit bee on goofy.jpg Horace Horsecollar-1.jpg Category:Animation Category:Short Films Category:Mickey Mouse cartoons Category:Donald Duck cartoons Category:Goofy cartoons